Realities: a tale

Front matter

REALITIES a Œale. BY E. LYNN,. AUTHOR OF " AZETH, THE EGYPTIAN," AND " AMYMONE." " Therefore should I Be but the essence of deformity, — A coward, — did my very eyelids wink At speaking out what I have dared to think." Keais. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET, 1851. TO WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. My dear Mr. Landor — The unvarying kindness with which you have treated me from the first hour of our happymeeting, has never been more manifest than in your acceptance of the dedication of a book which has received so rough a baptism as this. It would be endless to enumerate half the critical dangers undergone by the produc tion which I now lay at your feet with every feeling of reverence and affection. Nor is it to drag strictly private matters before the public that I allude to them; for, by a series of misfortunes, all the censure which else might have been confined to me alone, became current in the DEDICATION. different circles in which I move.

For three months my book has been a species of literary Caliban to my friends — a monstrous thing of wickedness and deformity— advocating all that was abhorrent to reason and good morals. Many sought to terrify me with dark pictures of evil consequences to my reputation — many to deter me from publishing by censure of the story as a work of art. Timid respectability converted the most cherished thoughts, and the boldest en deavours after good which I have yet attempted, into questionable forms of dulness or of vice; while hard names flew like hail-stones round me when I adhered to my unwelcome social doc trines, and still determined to publish them against all advice to the contrary. In truth the very diversity of opinion helped to give me strength ; for no two of my self-constituted judges pro nounced the same sentence.

One objected to my style, but approved of my sentiments ; another thought the style might pass current, but the opinions were little better than libel or high treason ; a valued friend suddenly withdrew his DEDICATION. V aid when most needed, because the " construc tion, of the book was not ingenious;" and an able critic condemned sentiments, style, and cha racters, but thought the " story slightly interest ing." Few women could have withstood such a battery of condemnation ; yet though of no illustrious nor aristocratic race, my father holds good blood of courage and independence in his veins, and I should blush to turn traitor to the charac teristic of moral bravery, which has been to our family a greater blessing than ancient lineage or ample rent-roll. Firm in. my conviction that the undaunted utterance of truth — as it is to each — ought to be the first duty of every author — con scious of the sincerity of my wish to do good, how far soever I may wander from my aim by ignorance — conscious, too, that I have not written one word which I do not believe with all my heart and soul, and to uphold which I would willingly suffer any amount of pain and social dis-esteem — I stood up against the storm, and neither bent nor broke before the critical simoom that threatened to lay waste the brightest hopes of VI DEDICATION. years.

Chapter I

They had ridden far and the evening was coining on, when young Clare de Saumarez turned her horse's head homeward. It was a pleasant sight to see her gallop so merrily through the lanes and woods, her light hand scarcely holding the rein, and her pliant form bending to each motion of her horse, " like as if," said the country people, " she'd a been born on his very back." And pleasant was it to see her naughtyskill, as she checked and fretted and otherwise maltreated the high spirit of her bright bay blood, and made him kick and prance as if some unblessed elf — cherub mate of Gilpin Horner — and no sweet thing of buoyant girlhood had mounted him. She made a pretty picture as she scoured along the road in her round low hat, with the drooping feather VOL. I. B REALITIES. blowing all across her eyes and curling in among the chestnut ringlets down her face — with her baby cheek flushed and fair, and her large blue eyes blight and clear.

Like a burst of sunlight she passed before your sight; like a joyous note of merry music. Care had not cankered one leaf in her blooming garden; sorrow had not dimmed one gem in her brilliant crown. Essentially a thing of impulse and all wild warm sensations was this young maiden child, pouring such a prodigality- of feeling into the smallest circumstances of her existence as would have served many for a lifetime of emotion. Clare de Saumarez — it was a high-sounding patronymic enough, suggestive of lengthy genea logies and courtly breeding — was of the great De Saumarez family of Shorne. She was the only child ; heiress to the vast estates, and keeper of the name and honour, which had flourished so long in pride and purity. She was the centre of all the knights and 'squires and gallant gentle men who, for so many generations, had main tained unbroken the legitimate transmission of the De Saumarez virtues.

We shall soon see whether she is fitted to keep up the family name and add lustre to the family shield in the pre scribed fashion of the De Saumarez race. She was now at a very interesting age, having REALITIES. 3 celebrated her thirteenth birthday about six months ago by presenting her mother with a copy of verses, vilely done and shamefully spelt, and entitled " A Thank-offering for Life." But her mother criticized the metre and counted tho feet, and made poor little Clare cry by her ridicule and her Zoelian objections uttered in such a cold and stonymanner of literary superiority-. Yet there was so much energy, life, and beauty about Clare de Saumarez that, in spite of her ready aptitude for tears, y-ou could not picture for her an unhappy future. Melancholy mania in a bird of paradise, or the death by jaundice of a Brazilian butterfly-, were as little within the range of pro bable contingencies as was cold dead misery possible to her.

She seemed to set at defiance the ordinary accidents of humanity, and to hold love and happiness in perpetual leash, guiding them before her wheresoever she turned. There was such a lavishness of life about her ! It was a mere gambler's chance whether all that un formed energy would shape itself out into the virtue of the angels or the vice of demons. Any way there would be an entireness of choice ; there would be no halting midway at respectable compromise between law and instinct — no pale hypocrisyof wise speech and stealthy indulgence — no coward sinning afraid of the consequences of B REALITIES. sin, and unwilling to accept the punishment with the pleasure. There would be none of all this half-beartedness. An enthusiastic upholder or a brave denier — setting her foot firmly on the tra ditions of society or following fervently in their shadow — she would be all not half a life.

And this might be read, as in an open book, in the broad brow — the deep eye so frank and fearless — the full lip and strong jaw — the glossy hair, bright and warm — where intellect, will, affection, and passion, showed themselves through these tender features of youth, as queenly lilies in the bud. For though all is only indication at present, it is indication in such a positive form that the perfect development may easilybe prognosticated. A terrible creature to manage was this same Clare de Saumarez ! Various methods of nursery discipline, based on nicely calculated nursery theories, had been tried; but without success. The mystic shibboleth had not yet been pro nounced, and Clara was still, as she had ever been, beyond all control and superior to every influence. No one exactly knew what was to be done with her.

She openly rebelled against cold authority ; the severity of moral condemnation had no reformatory power whatsoever; threats fired her rebellious blood, and extorted defiance ; neglect made her careless— punishments obsti- REALITIES, 5 nate ; and Mrs. de Saumarez at last pronounced her incorrigible, and hinted at a " strict system of correction," and the diligent " whipping out of the offending Adam." At thirteen years of age to be given over incontinently to the spirit of evil, and to be discarded from the affection of one's mother as too criminal to dwell in her wide heart, is not a recommendation of character. But happily for our Clare she had some slight excuse for her naughtiness, intense as it was. No one had ex perimented on her education in the only spirit which gives success, namely, the spirit of Love.

No one had tried to win her to goodness — no one to charm her into gentleness. All her charac teristics were overlooked or directly opposed. And what but imperfection could be the result of such a false system ? Until this spirit of Love has been employed, and until it has failed, she may be considered conditionally condemned only; she has not yet fallen bodily into the boiling caldron of sin irredeemable. Mrs. de Saumarez excused her educational failure by complaining of the violence and obstinacy of this scourge to strict propriety. And she was partly justified in her complaints. Baffled in her more serious endeavours she tried a lighter method. She stripped philosophy of her serge and clothed her in motley instead. All REALITIES. Clare's amusements must be made educational and intellectual, "developing her mind," said Mrs. de Saumarez ; " while pleasing her fancy."

She hoped this would prove an immense success. She bought a perfect magazine of maps, conversation cards, little books of poetry on science and natural history, German puzzle boxes of utili tarian object, &c. But Clare tore up the pictures to make paper frills for her dogs and kittens, and could not be induced to learn the puzzles or the poetry by any possible amount of temptation. While the lady mother sat waiting for her to repeat some sweet little bit of versified geology-, or a page of Roman history in a dialogue between papa and Laura, Clare was " messing about the rabbits," or coaxing the pigeons to eat out of her hand, or teaching her big dogs to beg — which they did with a very bad grace, and an unmistakeable protest against such canine frivolity. The person liked the best in the world by Clara was old Hugh Clayton, the hereditary groom of the Hall.

By this confession I allow the grave charge of vulgarity against my little friend. It is too true. Nine times out of ten when missing from the drawing-room, she would be found in the stable among the horses' heels, or buried in a world of dogs' heads and ears, or by the favourite rabbit-hutch, experimentalizing on cuniculine REALITIES. 7 food and having more than one fight with nature on the battle field of cuniculine digestion. Her ragged hair, so brown and curly, was always covered with straw and oats ; her dirtypinafore was always smeared with green traces of cabbage leaves in a state of vegetable dissolution, or blackened with the cobwebs and dust of the hay loft, the granary, and harness-room; but her fresh cheek was so rosy, her young face so bright and beautiful ! Often when she believed herself most secure from the tall windows of the Hall, which seemed to have human eyes in every pane inces santlywatching her movements, she would be caught by the prim ladies' maid or severe house keeper as she was following the gardener while he dug up the spaces between the currant trees and gooseberry bushes, teasing him for his spado and fork, and making illegal descents on the same if laid down unwarily-.

She never could be kept in the house or away from the yard and stables; though Mrs. de Saumarez did her best both by intellectual incitement and intellectual punishment ; and Mr, de Saumarez spoke to bet as gravely as if she had been convicted of shop lifting, or anyother immoral fact. Of all in this plebeian section of the household, as I said before, she liked old Hugh the best. In times of real difficulty he was almost the only REALITIES. person to whom she would attend — certainly the first to whom she flew for advice or protection. As this predilection was a capital crime in the eyes of one so essentially a gentlewoman as Mrs. de Saumaraz, Clare's conferences with old Hugh were generally carried on by stealth, though their fruits were borne on her riotous vocabulary which at all times and in all places was interlarded with the phrases of a jockey-, and the knowledge of a Harry Hieover.

Diana Vernon herself was not better acquainted with the stable and the kennel than was this young lady of gentle birth, who ought to have learnt the harp when she studied farriery, and mastered the sciences when she pondered over the evidences of Blood. Here then was the key to the discordances be tween Clare and her mother. The one loved the rudest the wildest exhibition of Life ; sensation and love were the great things necessary for her affection : the other bowed before the still wonders of Art, and carried the Artistic Feeling into the smallest details of domestic life. More over, Mrs. de Saumarez was a Woman. By this I mean she was a person who took her stand on her womanhood, and treated it as a moral qualifi cation. She cared not to ask herself whether her opinions and feelings were intrinsically right or no; she simply asserted that they were REALITIES. 9 "womanly" according to the conventional ideal of that characteristic ; full, as her admirers said, of the " nice feeling" and " right-mindedness" which Mrs. Ellis has made so popular.

She did not much value the affections and instincts of woman hood; she did not think these were characteristics to be specially preserved. Her affections lay ex clusively in her morality — and her morality was the product of her intellect; and thus there was not much room for the luxuriance of natural forces. It is easy to be understood how such a mental con dition as this must have been opposed to Clare's passion aud impulsiveness, and how much mutual affliction must have sprung from such mutual dissent between mother and child. The great peculiarity of Clare's domestic ex istence was this ; she was incessantly scolded. It was a wonder certainly that they had the heart to be so stern when she crept close to them, looking into their faces with those deep blue eyes of hers that demanded pardon by their very audacity of innocence.

But theywere bored by her innocence and made angry by her audacity. She was never out of mischief; and people grow tired of this in time, even with the most beautiful child in the world. Go where she might, and do what she would, she was always about something disastrous to her domestic peace. She was always B REALITIES. doing wrong, apparently for the fun of asking pardons never granted. She offended while words of good resolution were warm on her lips and tears of contrition big in her eyes. She pro mised to become a very El Dorado of steady matter-of-fact virtues, and the next moment she had jeopardized the whole household bysome wild prank, or had done some clumsy and out rageously benevolent action which became a stereotyped laugh against her. She was the plague of the whole neighbourhood ; more scolded, spoiled, and petted, than ever before fell to the lot of one individual to undergo.

How could this luxuriant life be the product of such parentage as that which Mr. and Mrs. de Saumarez supplied — a laboratory and a moral essay — a pedant in science and a pedant in morals ? By what law of nature had they brought forth a being so unlike themselves ? It was a strange physiological fact; not easy of solution as matters stood. Yet she was their child sure enough; for when she was born the whole village had been thrown into an uproar in the search for a healthy young mother to be the poor babe's nurse. Mrs. de Saumarez was unable to perform this office herself. Ethics and metaphysics had dried up more than the natural instincts of her heart, and left her like a stranded sea-weed with- REALITIES. 11 out one germinating point remaining. When the decision of nature was fairly understood, and Mr. de Saumarez had absolutely received the fact that his wife was but half a mother, he complacently smiled his reliance on science, and speedily brought up to the nursery a chemical compound based on the best analytical principles.

Unluckily it disagreed with the child. The saccharine mat ters, the phosphate of lime, the chalk, albumen, and other pedantries of the laboratory which he employed, were found ineffectual to preserve that delicate life ; though the father swore they were better than mother's milk, being subject to no disturbing causes. The baby pined; the doctors ordered a healthy nurse; and Mrs. de Saumarez shuddered when she thought that a peasant's milk must nourish the blood of her high-born child. No one was to be found. All the young married mothers seemed to have suddenly buried them selves alive, and an Herodian massacre might have passed over the baby world of the village. No one could be found ; excepting a young daughter of old Hugh's, who — oh, shame ! — had brought into the world a beautiful babyunsanc tioned by the marriage ceremony.

Vile Martha ! where were the judgments of Heaven that thou didst not die in thine hornof trial ? — that thy stricken form did not crouch REALITIES. beside thy child's unblessed corpse, and acknow ledge thy sin in the visible wrath of the Infinite ? Alas for the slack arm of justice ! The child lived and throve and laughed up in its mother's face, untouched by plague or leprosy or scaring wound of shame. And in that young unwedded bosom love and woman's pride poured through the deep channel of maternal affection in a rich stream of fertilizing happiness. And when she ought to have pined for shame, and shut out the light of heaven from her blighted brow, she sat beneath the clear sun, as bright and brave aud joyous a heart as ever beat within its ray-s. Proud too she felt, for her child's father was a grand nobleman — handsome and generous — wild perhaps — but then how great a gentleman ! — and she, the humble village girl, believed herself honoured when she traced and retraced his like ness in the rosy face of her little one.

For if like to him, how great and beautiful she would be ! And so poor Martha, though reviled and cast out, was very happy, and looked upon herself as much blessed in her maternity as a diademed queen when she hears the voice of her first-born, and knows that she has brought forth the lawful heir to the throne of half a world. Martha was very sinful doubtless — very pre sumptuous, impenitent, and bold in her guilt. REALITIES. 13 But authors only relate facts; their readers apply principles. Though the last of his family, Martha had been discarded by Hugh when her illegal maternity become patent to the village. Indeed Mrs. de Saumarez had insisted on this sacrifice to moral justice, under pain of instant dismissal. Tho hereditary servitor balanced his place against his paternal affections, and gave the preference to the former.

Martha was turned out of doors, and the faithful groom was rewarded with an increase of wages. However, no one could be now found for the pining heiress of the Hall but this same bloom ing, sinful, happy Martha. With great repug nance, and after much internal strife, Mrs. de Saumarez at last consented to an arrangement so fraught with iniquity. But it was too much for her. She could not bear to see her child — the offspring of such chaste morality- — nourished by one so criminal. It agonized the soul which no affection and no fear had ever stirred so deeply; it harrowed the heart to which propriety w-as the great all of creation. Was it not better, she used to ask herself, to let her child die in the unstained purity of her inheritance, than to keep her in life by the pollution of that life — the corruption of the very springs of being — the interfusion of all REALITIES. the passions and guilty propensities of her nurse?

It was a knotty point; a very godsend to Mrs. de Saumarez ; affording her mental food of a tough if not nutritious nature, that sustained her for many days without the aid of metaphysics. It ended in a compromise. Martha's services were retained, but Martha's presence was discarded. The rosy-cheeked sinfulness w-as once more sent away — her foster little one with her ; and then Mrs. de Saumarez sat down comfortably, and drew up a strict code of educational discipline to counteract the moral effects of this per nicious lacteal influence. We have seen how it worked. At the proper time Clare was returned home. Her mother, truth to say, was pleasantly startled at the improvementwrought in the pale puny changeling she had sent out. It could hardly be recognised. It had expanded into a fair, fat, rosy thing, with great blue eyes, and great red cheeks, and dimpled hands, and rounded legs — just the kind of thing that mothers delight to exhibit nude for the better display of the fat and the fairness of the baby creature.

Tumbling about the room like a larger ball — a soft round fluffy thing all pink and white — with wilful pro pensities of noise and mischief even then REALITIES. 15 laughing, if it saw but a bird fly across the lawn, as if it had been suddenlyseized with a merry madness — even when unnoticed and silent, rolling its heavy little head like an idiotic toy set in per petual motion — ever muttering pleasant thoughts with its red wet open lips that kissed all they came near, and left large stains on painted doll and dog— crowing with insane delight when it fell, for the twentieth time that hour, in the marvellous sitting posture of a clumsy baby — holding up its short white frock with both its dimpled hands as it came shyly to the call— pointing to its new shoes or its broad ribbons with a bird like note of unconscionable pride, as it strove to hug its little feet when scrambling over your lap — asserting its own wayward will and raising its shrill voice in passion or in pleasure on the smallest occasion — the most self-important, selfwilled thing in the world was this same infant heiress ; of more bustle, noise, assertion, and trouble than all the rest of the household combined.

But Mr. de Saumarez said it was noisy, and Mrs. de Saumarez said it was vulgar ; and both felt that nature had conferred the order of pater nity on them in a decoration of questionable shape. Martha Clayton alone declared it was the most REALITIES. beautiful baby ever seen : and more than one neighbour spoke low, and whispered of foul play, when they compared the pale little one on her knee — for which she seemed to have no special affection now — with this boisterous off-shoot of such trim propriety. Physiologymight have demonstrated necessities long before it could have reconciled these anomalies with any known rules. Poor Clare thus grew up under a daily ban which time only increased, as the characteristics repugnant to her educators developed themselves. For if she was noisy as an infant, what must she have been as a strong, high-spirited, growing girl ?

If wilful at four, must she not have been utterly unmanageable at fourteen ? God speed those who attenqited to control her ! Nothing more wild, untamed, and impulsive, had ever existed ; and Mrs. de Saumarez really deserved pity for her disappointment in this only trial of her theories and perpetuation of her nature. For one who valued art above all things, to know herself the mother of so fierce a disciple of nature — it was really an infliction ! But she read a certain Treatise on Compensation when ever she felt particularly unhappy; and she found it very consolatory and convincing. Gaily and bravely Clare galloped forward on REALITIES. 17 this summer's evening from which my story takes its date, until she came to the brow of a steep hill. The road had been repaired in such fashion as, by a fiction of the surveyors, passes for scientific macadamization.

Consequently it was very dangerous, and the acknowledged "bad bit" of the neighbourhood. Of course Miss Clare prepared to gallop down this hill twice as recklessly as on the level ground. Hugh knew her wilful ways, and riding hastily to her laid his hand on her bridle rein, and told her, in rather authorita tive accents, to walk Fleetfoot gently down the steep. It might be that the heiress was not dis posed to be commanded by the groom ; it might be that her fate had been marked out beforehand, and that she was acting under the decree of a special destiny; be that as it will, she heeded nothing of Hugh's remonstrance, but taking off her hat with a saucy smile, waved it round her head ; and rising in the saddle, dashed down the hill at a murderous pace. A sudden turn in the road hid her from the servant, who came down cautiously, walking his sleek marc with all that care for a valuable life which grooms display, and emigrant shipowners ignore.

As he turned the angle, he saw Fleetfoot quietly grazing by the hedgerow; while something that he thought to be Clare, in an undistinguish- REALITIES. able heap of blood and rags, was lying on the ground close to his head. Inexpressibly shocked the old man flung him self from his horse, expecting to find her dead or maimed for life. At that instant his young lady's voice called imperiously for " water," and in sinuated that he was an old fool for standing gaping there when he might be so much better employed. When Hugh returned from the wayside brook, with his hat running over in all directions, he found a child, pale and bleeding, resting against Clare's lap. She was a slight sickly little girl of about Clara's own age, but much less in size ; with fea tures sharp and delicate — a mouth of no vulgar but of no pleasing expression, vain and querulous in its thin lines — pale blue eyes, which had a hardness in their fixed look scarce so admirable as strange in one so young.

Her hair was beau tifullykept; it was long and glossy though thin, and of that peculiar straw colour which bad judges call flaxen, and anxious mothers assert to be golden. This hair is seen only with a certain complexion and a certain character. I never knew an enthusiast with hair of that particular inanimate tint of which I am speaking ; and I never knew it combined with passion, even where the temperament was nervous. REALITIES. Clara, flushed and frightened, did not hear old Hugh's surprised exclamation as he returned: that girl was his grandchild, little Alice Clayton. If Clara had heard those words then spoken, another page of life than the one she now turned would have spelled out her fate — another cast than the one she now threw would have assigned her a different lot. It was, unknown to herself, the turning-point of her destiny, for all her after-life was referable to this small moment — this minute event of chance.

Hugh had just so much experience of human ailments as to know that a swoon is not death. He reassured Clara by saying roughly; "Oh she'll do well enough ! — she'll soon be as brjsk as a terrier pup in a rat-hole; and it's of no good Miss carrying on like that, even if she be dead ! Crying can't bring her to life again," and then he turned away muttering, " the varmint deserved it. What call had she here !" Clare dried her tears and looked at him wonder ing ; and, as a circumstance worthy of note, it must be told that she believed what he said without question or contradiction. Hugh took the little girl on his knee and bathed her face afresh. She opened her eyes and began to cry piteously. " Oh, I have hurt you very much !" sobbed REALITIES. Clara bursting into tears again, and kissing that pale face, mud-begrimed as it was.

" Never mind that !— but you've torn my frock and dirtied my hair," exclaimed the child pushing her aside. Hardly intelligible from tears and terror, her first words were lamentations for her disordered person. Instinctively Clara shrank from a nature so opposite to her own ; but old Hugh laughed and grumbled to himself, " Ah ! she was always a lady !" A sudden glow of pity and benevolence soon swept away this instinct of repugnance ; aud once more Clare's generous heart beat with the impe tuous kindliness of her nature. She sprang on her horse, and in a loud voice commanded Hugh to take up the child and ride quick to the Hall. She then struck Fleetfoot sharply, and never drew rein till she came to the old lodge gates. She kept so far ahead that she heard nothing of the instructions the groom gave the frightened girl.